World's Christian Endeavor Union

wceu: May 21, 2013

Why CE? - First article in the CE Basics column

In the course of the 132 years Christian Endeavor exists, the movement was developed in different directions, depending on culture, church developments, individual ideas, etc. For CE unions with a long tradition and for people and organizations who got to know about CE just recently it may be useful to learn about the basic ideas of Christian Endeavor.
To begin with I try to answer the question: What was Francis E. Clark's (founder of the movement) reason to start CE?
Pastor Clark was wondering how to help a group of youngsters grow in faith. They had given their life to Christ recently and the pastor feared their zeal for serving Jesus may grow cold soon if there was no opportunity for them to become active. In the traditional church activities was no active part for the youth. So Clark developed the idea of a society for Christian Endeavor. It was meant to be a youth-only group. The structure with president, secretary, treasurer and various committees was not much different from that of an American church. The CE society was a training field for the young Christians where they were on their own with freedom to try out their ideas. The pastor and the elders of the church were always around to get advice from, but they were not to interfere in the regular activities. The Learning-by-doing effect was one reason for the great success of CE. The zeal of the youth got drive by the fact that they were taken serious, were given responsibility and had room to make mistakes. Since they understood the feelings and desires of their fellow-youth and spoke their language, they could reach out to them successfully.